Perry Rubenstein's 24 Street gallery will present a single wall installation with related
drawings by Andrew Guenther. Andrew Guenther synthesizes a diverse sampling of
topics and references both art-historical and from popular culture: death metal, throbbing zombie carcasses, animals, satyrs, hippie kitsch, goats, owls, and the notion of the
grotesque. Guenther's cosmology evokes the work of Francisco Goya and Hieronymous
Bosch. Yet his concerns resonate with contemporary society's ongoing fascination with
the gruesome and bizarre, the tragic and comic, exemplified in the films of Dario
Argento, or TV reality shows such as "The Swan" and "Extreme Make-over," and also
literature written by J.G. Ballard and Joyce Carol Oates. Guenther utilizes such
allusions as a method of highlighting natural human instincts spun out of control. His
paintings serve as a form of cultural reactivation, bringing the atrocious to light as a
means of re-examining society. Guenther's palette and loose application of paint present
an uncanny expectation, suggesting ghostly figures half present, semi-formed, or birthed
by accident.
Guenther was born in 1976 in Wheaton, Illinois. He graduated from Mason Gross School
of the Arts, Rutgers University. He has had group exhibitions in Los Angeles, Chicago,
and New York.